Monday April 29, 2019 | by Eve Aaron

HELP WANTED: Urban Glass announces search for director of education

Urban Glass has launched a search for a director of education to lead its successful teaching programs that reach over 3,000 students a year at this leading Brooklyn, New York, nonprofit arts center. The UrbanGlass studios accommodate a wide-range of glassmaking techniques, and feature a dedicated educational hotshop, flame working studio, extensive kilnworking facilities, as well as areas for mosaics and neon.

The glassblowing reality show included (at left) Pilchuck executive director Christopher Taylor as a guest judge, and artist and educator Katherine Gray as the show's "resident glass master." Also pictured is Blown Away host Nick Uhas (at right).

Thursday April 25, 2019 | by Eve Aaron

CONVERSATION: Two insiders share their thoughts on the soon-to-stream Netflix reality show

More than most other art-making processes, working in the glass hotshop lends itself to spectacle with the attendant smoke, fire, and heat. It's surprising then that it's taken so long for a reality television show to be themed around the practice. Blown Away, which has wrapped up shooting but is not yet available for streaming on Netflix, is tentatively set to debut in the U.S. in July 2019. (It had its world premier on the newly launched Makeful satellite channel in Canada in February).

R & Company principals Zesty Meyers (L) and Evan Snyderman.

Thursday April 18, 2019 | by Andrew Page

Upcoming UrbanGlass Gala to honor artists Tauba Auerbach and Keith Sonnier, as well as gallerists Zesty Meyers and Evan Snyderman

UrbanGlass, the nonprofit art center that publishes the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet, will celebrate its 2019 Gala + Auction on May 16, 2019. The event will honor UrbanGlass-affiliated contemporary artists Tauba Auerbach and Keith Sonnier as well as principals Zesty Meyers and Evan Snyderman of the design gallery R & Company. The annual gala is a critical fundraiser for the Brooklyn non-profit's year-round programs serving more than 12,000 people each year through exhibitions, studio demonstrations, performances, and the internationally distributed magazine Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly. Since its founding in 1977 as the New York Experimental Glass Workshop, UrbanGlass has been a resource for major artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Kiki Smith who have relied on its facilities and community to realize their ambitious projects in glass. This year's honorees continue that tradition:

Thursday April 4, 2019 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Kim Harty's photographic and sculptural homage to historic Venetian glassmaking at Heller

Opening today at New York City's Heller Gallery is "Memoria Technica: Old Venetian Glass," a solo exhibition by artist Kim Harty who serves as the head of the glass department at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. The title, "Memoria Technica," refers to a mnemonic device -- a system for remembering things -- which is appropriate as the works' main subject is object memory. The exhibition includes photographs and small-scale sculptures that extend upon Harty's 2013 project in which she made slow-exposure light drawings in total darkness to reproduce her impressions of 72 historical glass vessel forms she discovered in a book of the holdings of Czech collector Vojtech Lanna simply titled Old Venetian Glass. The resulting photos featured Harty's blurred body in the background with the lines of light a relic of her hand movements, which brought home the relationship between these glass vessels and the human body. The work in the Heller exhibition takes the translation one step further. Working with a expert in 3-D printing, Harty has created new objects based on the photographed light drawings which bring the project back to three dimensions.

Tuesday April 2, 2019 | by Eve Aaron

Rui Sasaki chosen for the 33rd Corning Museum of Glass Rakow Commission

The Rakow Commission is a Corning Museum of Glass annual event that began in 1986. Each year since, a selected artist, not yet in the Corning collection, is offered an opportunity to expand his or her work, and create a new piece for the musuem. On March 28th, 2019, Rui Sasaki was announced as this year's winner, and the artist was in Corning to present a lecture to discuss it. Sasaki's Rakow Commission work, Liquid Sunshine/ I am a Pluviophile will be included in the Corning's upcoming major exhibition "New Glass Now," a survey of the latest work in glass from around the world.

Thursday March 21, 2019 | by Andrew Page

CONVERSATION: UrbanGlass education director Ben Wright shares his thoughts about taking on the artistic director position at Pilchuck

A day after the official Pilchuck announcement that Ben Wright would succeed Tina Aufiero as artistic director, the outgoing UrbanGlass education director sat down with the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet (which is published by UrbanGlass) to share his thoughts on taking on the new post, which he plans to do sometime in May. Ben has presided over the steady growth and expansion of the educational offerings of UrbanGlass since he took the position in January 2014, shortly after the Brooklyn non-profit reopened after an extensive renovation. Among his most proud accomplishments have been his institution of a scholarship program that allowed 300 people to take workshops in the past year, his work as a professional mentor with the students of the UrbanGlass Bead Project, the expansion of outreach programs to youth and seniors in the community, and expanding the education program to become "a significant source of support for working glass artists here in New York." We asked him about his relationship with Pilchuck, and his vision for what he hopes to accomplish in this new high-profile role at the leading residential glass-education program.

Wednesday March 20, 2019 | by Andrew Page

IN MEMORIAM: Stephen Rolfe Powell (1951 - 2019)

The glass art world is still reeling from the news that one of its leading artists and educators Stephen Rolfe Powell died suddenly last weekend at the age of 67. The sad event is even more shocking because of Stephen's vitality. Though he may have been old enough to retire, Stephen's possessed a legendary physical strength that allowed him to make his massive vessels festooned with colorful murrini plumage, as well as unfailingly upbeat energy that fueled his drive to make tiny Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, into an unlikely center for glass education. He exuded a youthful vigor and intensity that belied his years. Equally impressive was his warmth, generosity, and hospitality, a reflection of his Southern roots, which helped establish his prominence in the glass community. Until recently, he was vice-president of the Glass Art Society, and a highly visible presence at the landmark Murano conference in 2018.

Susan Edgerley. Courtesy the artist.

Thursday March 14, 2019 | by Eve Aaron

AWARD: Susan Edgerley wins CA$ 25,000 in Canada's prestigious Saidye Bronfman Prize

The Saidye Bronfman Prize is Canada's most prestigious fine-crafts award. It includes a generous CA$ 25,000 award and the winning work is added to the Canadian Museum of History's permanent collection. The 2019 award has gone to Susan Edgerley, who uses glass as a means of expression for her complex musings on the ethereal aspects of Nature, going as far as to compare the medium to a writing tool and the glassmaking process to writing a story. "Glass is, for me, a poetic material. I've never really been attracted to making objects with glass. I've very much been attracted to using glass as a means of expression..." the artist says in the video below. "I work in many different techniques and each technique speaks to a certain idea that I've been trying to express at that time in a series of work," Edgerley states in a video on the site of the Canada Council for the Arts. Edgerley's works are abstract yet organic, ethereal yet earthly; they take inspiration from intricate details found in nature, such as seaweed and foliage but their glass component lifts them into a more mysterious, intangible space.

Mark Eliott, Down at the Water Table (Detail), 2018. Blown and sculpted borosilicate glass, recycled Australian Red Cedar, water. H 22 3/4, W 27, D 6 1/4 in. photo: richard weinstein

Thursday March 14, 2019 | by Andrew Page

Flameworker Mark Eliott wins 2019 Tom Malone Prize, which comes with AU$ 15,000 cash award

Mark Eliott has been named the winner of the 2019 Tom Malone Prize, marking the first time a flameworker has been awarded this prestigious Australian award The multi-media artist and Canberra Glassworks instructor who works primarily with borosilicate glass joins previous awardees Clare Belfrage, Gabriella Bisetto, Charles Butcher, Cobi Cockburn, Brian Corr, Mel Douglas, Deirdre Feeney, Kevin Gordon, Marc Leib, Jessica Loughlin, Tom Moore, Nick Mount and Benjamin Sewell. Along with the winning work being acquired by The State Art Collection at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Eliott will also eceive a cash award of AU$ 15,000. The prize has been offered since 2003 and is supported by philanthropist Sheryl Grimwood, who recently increased the award amount from AU$ 12,000 to AU$ 15,000.

Stephan Cox, courtesy the Morgan Contemporary Glass Gallery.

Thursday March 14, 2019 | by Eve Aaron

The amazing annual array of fanciful glass pouring vessels returns to Pittsburgh gallery for "Teapots!13"

Coming up from April 4th through June 8th Morgan Contemporary Glass Gallery, in Pittsburgh, will host Teapots!, its 13th invitational exhibition on the one of the most classic, practical, and graceful household items -- the teapot. This year's exhibition will feature works by more than 30 artists that cross a variety of mediums, including ceramics, fiber, glass, metal, wood and mixed media. This quotidian form is amazingly versatile, offering a surprisingly wide range of possibilities. In the exhibition's press release the parameters are laid out by the museum director's personal definition of the tea-lover's vessel: "...Amy Morgan's only requirements for a 'teapot' are a spout, handle and lid--leaving the rest up to the creative discretion of the artist." Such a broad definition leaves, as one can imagine, much for the artist to explore.

Glass: The UrbanGlass Quarterly, a glossy art magazine published four times a year by UrbanGlass has provided a critical context to the most important artwork being done in the medium of glass for more than 40 years.